


Penance

by Ael_tRlailiiu



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 02:15:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5399084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ael_tRlailiiu/pseuds/Ael_tRlailiiu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snow and Charming grapple with the immediate aftermath of Killian's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penance

Mary Margaret closed the door quietly out of habit only to see her husband at the kitchen table, awake, his sword still close at hand. She smelled coffee. He answered her glance toward the crib with a nod; Neal was asleep. 

“How is she?” David asked. 

“Emma? About like you’d expect.” Not here, and that still felt wrong. The loft had burst at the seams for months, but since Camelot it had just been the three of them. The place felt cavernous and cold now. “She said she was going to get some rest. How are you?”

“I just–I can’t believe we’re doing this. Doing this again.” He shook his head and cupped his hands around his mug. 

Planning a funeral for someone Emma loved, she inferred, and sat down across from him without taking off her coat. She could tell he had more to get off his chest. 

“I keep wondering what we could have done differently. How we could have stopped this. If it’s just going to be the same mistakes next time. Aren’t we supposed to be better at being parents than this by now? Better at–this.”

“There’s not going to be a next time.” She sounded flat and weary to herself. If he could only talk about this as Emma’s father for now, then she would let him pretend for a while that he hadn’t lost a friend. What Mary Margaret had lost, she couldn’t even say.

“You think?” He looked up at her with flinching eyes. 

“Not for Emma.” She got up and found a mug for herself, to have something to do with her hands. “David, the woman who would rather sleep in her car than my spare room three years ago was going to move in with him. Not some poky little apartment, either, but a house. A big house.” A place to put down roots if ever she had seen one, a place to grow, and the dull pain in her own heart bloomed brighter for an instant.

David nodded. “Henry told me. I can’t believe they managed to keep that a secret from us.”

“I know. So I know what you’re thinking–” she saw his guilty start “–and the answer is no. We won’t ever have to do this again. Killian was it for her. I think we knew that before.”

“I guess. There’s knowing and… knowing.” 

Knowing and watching your daughter break, knowing and feeling the sobs that wracked her body. She hunted through the cupboards for the whiskey and added a generous slug to her coffee. 

“You want some of this?” she asked. 

David shook his head. “One of us should keep an eye on things. There might be something out there still.” 

She drank her coffee and went to bed, and left him to keep his watch.


End file.
